Silence

I pray, but I'm lost. Am I just praying to silence?

Martin Scorsese's 2016 film based on the 1966 novel by Shūsaku Endō of the same name, Silence (沈黙 Chinmoku) beings with darkness and the subtle sounds of Japan in the summer, scattered insects chirping before they are engulfed by the deafening song of the cicadas. I could not conjure about a better opening as I too was greeted by same screeching sound when I first arrived.

Away from the ceaseless blaring of the city's soundscape, I was faced with silence for the first time in my life. And nothing in the world in more deafening than silence.

In the film, two Jesuit priests enter Japan during the time of religious persecution in search of their mentor, another Jesuit priest who was rumored to have succumbed to torture and has since renounced his faith.

Scorsese wastes no time in depicting the creativity and cruelty of the Tokugawa shogunate. Scalding hot water slowly poured over naked bodies, crucified against the incoming tides, hung upside down over cesspits. And that's just what they did to the human body.

The goal is to crush the spirit. And they were equally skilled at torturing the mind as well.

Surprisingly, the film treats the shogunate and the Christians with a fairly even hand. At its core, Scorsese presents the characters exactly as they are - people, who have very set and firm beliefs that are at an ideological war.

There is no overt judgment of the shogunate, and neither are they clearly labeled as the antagonist. Of course the cruelty that they inflicted is not shown in a positive light, but at the same time they weren't portrayed as unthinking devils. Quite the opposite actually since the films spends time overtly debating the clashing ideologies.

A particularly compelling scene has Andrew Garfield's character, Fr. Rodrigues, in a heated debate with his captor, the historical inquistor, Inoue Masashige. Masashige argues that Christianity has no place in Japan because it is a swamp, where nothing grows - a disturbingly still-relevant analogy for Japan which is still a country set on its own ways of doing things - persistently resistant to new ideas. Fr. Rodrigues argues back that naturally nothing will take root, when the soil itself is poisoned.

The stalemate that they reached is that Masashige claims he does not wish to be cruel, and does indeed want to set Fr. Rodrigues and his followers free on the condition that he and his followers apostasize by stepping on an image of Christ, called a fumi-e. The priest unsurprisingly, and understandably refuses. In response, the shogunate tortures and executes his followers using slow agonizing methods of torture.

Rodrigues prays to God for help, and the response is always the titular silence.

If God were real, why does he remain silent and indifferent to the suffering of people who love Him? And even if He were real, would you want to follow someone who lets His people die such horrific deaths?

Ultimately, even if you choose to believe, how does one respond to such deafening silence?

It would all too easy to jump to the question is there a God or not? I personally believe that whole debate is moot, and somewhat shallow given that it is likely that a person watching this film would have already made up his mind about that question.

Rather its more telling if we consider what do we think of the person who persists to believe in a silent God.

Do we consider the faithful as foolish for listening to silence? After all, of what use is prayer if they are left unanswered? On the other overtly generous extreme, do we venerate the faithful for their faith against all odds? That the faithful should always remain that - faithful, as there is no room for doubt for the believer.

I feel the film ascribes to neither, as the Jesuit brand of Catholicism would as well.

I am all too familiar with this experience. It seems sometimes that no matter how much I pour into prayer and words, both to the divine or otherwise, I usually met with nothing but the hollow ringing of emptiness. 

However in Jesuit spirituality, we believe that to doubt is not only human, but also an essential part of being believing.

"Faith begins, where reason ends" is a idea commonly thrown around that faith and reason are mutually exclusive. However, I believe that this is a misconception - faith without reason is not faith at all. It is what we call "blind faith" - where we follow just because, without fully understanding. 

That's where doubt plays an important role. Doubting is a form of critical thought, and when other religions discourage it, it's understandable that people who are experience the harsher side of reality ultimately reject those religions. They're insular. And ultimately run into the danger of becoming irrelevant.

So what evidence do we look for when God is silent? 

The Jesuit response is at the same time more enigmatic yet somehow quite all-inclusive - find God in all things.

It's a challenge to the faithful to find reason not in a literal voice of God booming from the cosmos, but rather in the mundane, and even in the morally ambiguous.

Take for example that bastion of logic: science. Can you find God in science, when in contradicts the Bible?

It's not so different from being a radio astronomer, I believe. Why search for life when there is nothing (so far) out there except cosmic noise? Many discoveries are found accidentally or in the most innocuous corners of the observable universe. 

In fact, the Pope, who is also a Jesuit and a scientist, says that "scientific theories were not incompatible with the existence of a creator – arguing instead that they 'require it'."

Silence, therefore, isn't just about God being silent, but also the personal, internal silence of mind and spirit required to hear the "voice" of God. There are far too many concerns both consequential and petty in our everyday lives that create noise. It's only when we achieve that level of still that moment of clarity can be experienced.

For Fr. Rodrigues that moment is when God tells him to step on Christ's image to save his followers. Is that really God who spoke to him? Was it just his own mind? Or worse, the Devil?

To find the answer, one has to look at the ending - wherein Andrew Garfield's Fr. Rodrigues spends the rest of his life in silence. 

And as always, I continue to listen for an answer.